Quick Fix

This week's readings was more articles about how the newspaper industry is suffering greatly and many people are losing their jobs and blah blah blah.  It really gets old to have  this information shoved in my face week after week.  I mean, I know it is happening but I don't want to keep hearing about it as I approach my senior year of college.  Let' put it this way...It is not very motivating to hear day in and day out.

It's no secret that newspapers across the country are making various cuts in order to save time and money.  Lately, one popular practice newspapers are testing is outsourcing their editing to foreign countries.  In theory, it sounds like a great idea.  However, in my opinion it is just a quick fix to a bigger problem.

Sending copy to places like India to be edited it obviously ALOT cheaper then paying someone to do it in the United States.  However, when you send copy to a far away place there is no way they will catch all the mistakes and errors someone locally would.  People in India will correct punctuation and spelling I'm sure and that is great.  But what about things like misspelling of local people and places, street directions being incorrect and other things like that.  These are mistakes that someone local would more than likely catch compared to someone overseas who has never even been to where the paper is being distributed.

Some may argue that this doesn't matter and the most important thing is keeping costs down at a time like this.  I disagree.

When a newspaper continually makes little errors, they add up and people are very bothered by it.  People who read the newspaper have this strange sense of possession and often refer to a newspaper as "my paper."  People don't like to see errors in "their' paper, especially careless ons that could be avoided.  If all copy was outsourced was edited in foreign countries, I strongly believe the credibility and respect of newspapers would decline.  I don't think saving a few extra dollars is more important then the cost of losing respect, readership and credibility. 

Kissing Editing Goodbye

 The main point of this article was that editors are being significantly let go from many papers we are all familiar with.  The newspaper industry is suffering and faced with having to make cuts.  Many papers are choosing to make those cuts by decreasing the numbers of editors in the newsroom, resulting in stories being published without a second read.

This change is putting more responsibility on the reporters than ever before.  While I am a firm believer in a reporter doing their job, I also think editing is very important.  With fewer editors, the chances of mistakes getting published are much more likely.  As I wrote in my research paper, this will harm the respect and trustworthiness of a paper by its readers.  When a newspaper isn't accurate, their audience looses trust.  The article says it best when it says, " Editors are guardians of credibility, and without credibility we really haven't got a leg to stand on."  Editors are there for more than jsut adding a missing comma or conjunction.

The article stated that saving the reporting jobs has become a priority at the cost of editing jobs.  I don't think it can just be decided that reporters are more important than editors.

Reporters work under tight deadlines and time constraints.  I find that after working into the late hours of the night, I get tired and make mistakes.  I depend on peer editing to help make my story better and catch mistakes my eyes just didn't see.

Sometimes I find that I read a sentence over and over and over and still don't find a mistake that is staring right at me.  I automatically correct something in my head as I read it because I know what it is supposed to say.

No one can be exactly sure where the future of copy editing is headed.  The article offered a couple suggestions, but nothing is known for sure.  We will just have to wait and see.

Math. Gross.

"I chose journalism because I absolutely HATE math!!"

Sound familiar? haha

I must admit that I am one of these people.  Studying numbers and doing math problems this past week made my brain hurt and I am not looking forward to the quiz on Wednesday.  Even though I would love to write a blog bashing math and complaining about it, i really have realized more this year how important numbers are--especially in terms of editing.

Numbers are all around us-in tax stories, police stories and much more.  One of the main problems I think is that most journalists (of course not all) don't like math and are a little rusty.

"If you don't know the difference between a noun and a verb, you could never get a job as a reporter or editor. But newsrooms are full of people who don't know how to calculate a percentage," said Roger Simons, who was an award winning columnist for both the Sun-Times and Baltimore Sun, in an article I found on poynter's Web site.

I have really become to understand that without decent math skills, one cannot be an effective journalist.  There are numbers all around us essential to so many stories and we need to be able to deal with them.

We review the Daily Illini every class period and SO often the numbers are wrong and don't make sense.  How embarrassing! It makes me wonder just how often this happens in big newspapers.

It also brings up the issue of both why aren't the editors catching errors in numbers and also why the reporters are being so careless.

If anything, this past week has taught me that I need to refresh myself before this week's quiz.  And also, just how important math really is, even though I hate to admit it.

Wish me luck on the quiz Wednesday.  Hopefully we can use our calculators.

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